1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to an optical disc drive, and more particularly to a tray-type optical disc drive for noise reduction.
2. Description of the Related Art
In response to the explosive growth in the volume of information, most multi-media products are issued in the form of optical discs. In recent years, consumptive optical discs also experience a stable increase. Nowadays, almost every computer has an optical disc drive. Optical disc drives indeed play a very important role in terms of multi-media products.
An optical disc drive uses an optical pick-up head to retrieve an optical disc which is carried by a disc tray to be loaded into the optical disc drive and rotates therein. A high level optical disc drive is normally capable of driving the optical disc to rotate at a rotation rate over 10,000 rpm. Since the optical disc rotates at a high speed, a strong airflow is generated at the vicinity of the rotating optical disc.
Such a strong airflow would easily cause the disc tray carrying the optical disc to vibrate, hence causing the optical disc to wobble and eventually resulting in an unstable wind shear. The wind shear would further intensify the vibration of the optical disc, generate noise due to the high speed rotation of the optical disc, and make it even more difficult for the optical pick-up head to retrieve the optical disc.
Referring to FIG. 1A, a top view of the disc tray of a conventional tray-type optical disc drive is shown. The tray-type optical disc drive 100 includes a loader 102 and a loader 102 having a disc-loading region 104. Several retainers 106 are disposed on the periphery of the disc-loading region 104 for positioning the optical disc loaded into the disc-loading region 104. As shown in 1A, an aperture 108 is disposed at the bottom of each of the retainers 106 due to the consideration of the formation of the mold.
Referring to FIG. 1B, a bottom view of the disc tray of FIG. 1A is shown. To prevent the airflow generated when the optical disc rotates in a high speed from passing through the apertures 108 disposed on the periphery of the optical disc lest the optical disc might wobble even violently, the conventional method is to attach a sealing tape 116 onto the part of the bottom of the disc tray corresponding to each of the apertures 108 so that the airflow would pass through the apertures 108. The conventional method reduces the overall noises of the optical disc drive by containing the airflow inside the tray. However, the method of attaching a sealing tape 116 onto the bottom of the disc tray not only increases the manufacturing cost in terms of labor and materials, but also increases structure complexity.